Inspired by Eleanor Roosevelt...

Women are like teabags.

They never know how strong

they are until they are

in hot water.

  - Eleanor Roosevelt

 
 The day on Campobello was rainy but my spirits were high.  After all, I was visiting the summer home of a woman I had admired for years and we were having tea with her!

   Well, actually, it was with two Eleanor Roosevelt interpreters but it was a wonderful experience nonetheless.  The stories and antidotes were fascinating.  I've always admired Eleanor Roosevelt for her humanitarian causes and selfless work for the downtrodden but to find in her an inspiration for my photography?

We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear
in the face…we must do that which we think we cannot. 

   If one wishes to travel with the heart of a pilgrim one must expect to encounter difficulties...they are inevitable.  It is how we deal with those difficulties that makes all the difference. The irony is that those very same difficulties can often lead us to create our most memorable work.

   Eleanor Roosevelt had to overcome so much in her life but it never compromised her principles or her great heart.  I am staying in Pembroke, Maine with other photographers who do not take a contemplative path with their work.  That's fine and as it should be.  We are all who and what we are and we should celebrate our differences.  One photographer lead me to explore a subject that was somewhat unfamiliar to me.

   I have never been much of a floral photographer but at the Roosevelt home I was inspired to create a "bouquet" of images in tribute to this amazing woman.   I offer them in the link below along with a last bit of wisdom from her... "Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway.”

 

Eleanor's Flowers